Tired (Great "Men," One.)

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, fuck Abe Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

...

My black face fades,

hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

I saw this last night.

Two things; 

Democrat Scott Colom retains a narrow but steadily widening lead over Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, in one of the few major midterm races that remains uncalled. Also, Michigan was a sweep at the statewide level and at least as far as this Senatorial race is concerned their map down in Mississippi looks more Blue State than ours does.

And Erick Ericson just completely bitching about how Republicans let too many weirdos into the Party. LOL. I have to admit, I agree with Erick here, but not for the reasons he might think I do. He's right, but not in the way that he thinks he is. 

He's mad because the Trump cultists ran away with the show. 

He's not mad that Southern White crypto-segregationist assholes like himself enabled this bullshit for 50 years, gradually stealing the Republican Party right out from under the likes of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes greater and lesser, and John McCain and Mitt Romney until Trump was inevitable and a regular guy, even of that type, couldn't get elected as a Republican (but the weirdos could) so they started having to run as Democrats.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Erick's mad that the stereotypical Southern Georgia Tech Football-and-Rush Limbaugh blowhard bro types can't win as Republicans anymore. 

Not that most of the guys like that I've ever known in 50 years (like my late uncle, who being an Army veteran had the sense to know fucking with the Iranians was a terrible idea 40 years ago, and who having served in Vietnam thought War was something that should be avoided if possible...we had that conversation) would have made it in today's Republican Party either. 

For that matter the Susan Collins white Yes-Woman types can't make it either.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Meanwhile, Republicans ended up with *Checks Notes* people like Lauren Blowbert, until they didn't because she lost too. 

Not people who are Believers or convincingly even believe in much of anything...but rather, a certain type of person who weirdly idolizes "Belief" itself. They don't want to really talk the talk, much less walk the walk of being anything in particular...but they grab onto and idolize the "Idea" of being a "Christian" like that shit is a fucking sports team or something. It's little more than an excuse to fight and "Win."

Never mind what you're actually "winning."

Again, I've got a partner and a kid to think about, I can't afford to live like this.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. ~2 Timothy 4:3

In fact most of the traditional Christian people that I know who identifiably are that, are Democrats now.

As are those whose spiritual lives are basically the remains of being that, people like me for example.

Even people like my ex-wife can't keep this shit going anymore, from what I've heard and seen. She was never MAGA (which actually kind of surprised me) but from what one of our mutual friends told me even she got tired of this shit. 

I suppose it didn't hurt that she's some sort of a support person for a social services agency now. I'm not gonna lie, the first words out of my mouth were "Bitch has a job?!?!?!"

My...honestly former...friend couldn't really argue with that assessment. 

But then he's tired, too. And this is somebody I fell out with 20 years ago over my loss of support for Bush 43...not because of my ex-wife who we both happen to know and that whole mess a few years earlier.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

I could be wrong, but it's looking more and more to me like the whole damn Republican thing was just completely dependent on a total Magistracy of Bullshit that literally depended on total Republican control of the government and of regulators and on the idea that the average person was going to keep buying the whole hog when it came to all this stuff, every day, basically forever.

I couldn't do it, I stopped doing it before any of this was ever a thing.

Never mind most of us couldn't do it simply because they couldn't or wouldn't even keep that shit at a basic level...or even a plausible level of Crazy. They couldn't stop, constant escalation of everything and an ever-widening circle of enemies is eventually just going to wear people out and make them give up if it doesn't cause them to snap first. Not everybody is wired to be a fucking Cultist.

Shit had to keep getting bigger, louder, more brassy and obnoxious, in your face and up your ass every fucking day until you just didn't even wanna see that shit anymore, and again I say this as a former Republican.

And then you have to figure, these fucking people don't actually want to participate in government, or their own legal defense, or even much of anything else past whatever they think is "fun" or "looks cool" and they quite openly don't give a shit about how anything actually works.

Like I'm sorry but this bit by Greg Bovino, who pretty much said he'd rather sit there day drinking than show up to defend himself in a congressional hearing just pissed me right the fuck off. As an Air Force security forces veteran I happen to know, if they say you're going, you go. You show up on time, look regulation, answer honestly, do what you gotta do and then you leave. You don't have to like it, but if you don't go they will come get you. It's not just that the consequences for shirking the system are potentially apocalyptic. It's...I mean what the fuck are you even doing there if you don't believe in what you're doing enough to show up??

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

Then why do it?? Why do the actions if you don't want to show up to defend said actions later??

Legal participation even for the accused and the right to face one's accusers and defend oneself under the Law is a RIGHT. 

It's a thing people killed and died for, because there was a time when we didn't have that and they could just try you in absentia, and soldiers could show up and just kill you and be done with it and people might not even have had the right to know why it happened. 

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war
Gather 'round me people
There's a story I would tell
'Bout a brave young Indian
You should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix Valley
In Arizona land
Down the ditches a thousand years
The waters grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Til the white man stole their water rights
And the sparkling water stopped
Now, Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war.

~The Ballad of Ira Hayes, by Johnny Cash.

These fucking people love the capricious Power of the State when they're the only ones that have it, and then only with complete unaccountability. When they don't have that, they'd rather just sit there and get drunk.

Our system is our system because our Founders, having lived under something else, were well aware that unaccountable Power wielded capriciously and cruelly by people who don't give a shit tends to lead to bloody Revolution...and having led and fought in one of those themselves...they knew that it was always possible that they could face the same. Hence, a carefully-constructed system of laws.

People fought and bled and died for this stuff. This didn't happen by Magic, and it's not myths and legends. You can go and you can see where it happened and you can study that history and so on.

But Republicans stopped caring because it wasn't them.

Going to suggest maybe we ought to disallow shallow vapid Narcissists form being in our government?

And it's funny how these idiots and their "Great Men" theory of Everything simply couldn't and didn't account for that people would just get tired of this shit and vote it down.

I'm tired of this shit. I helped vote it out.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X.

Last Post

[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."